


Lavellan Bros: Meet Kiara

by blarghe



Series: Lavellan Bros [3]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Cute, Family, Fluff, Found Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24968374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blarghe/pseuds/blarghe
Summary: It's finally time that Theo start sharing some of his secrets. He has someone very important to introduce to Taren.Written so that it works for either AU, where Theo is either a new Inquisition scout or the actual Inquisitor, and Taren is either the First of their clan who is spending time in Skyhold supporting the Inquisition, or the Inquisitor.
Series: Lavellan Bros [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1799140
Kudos: 2





	Lavellan Bros: Meet Kiara

Theo was nervous as he led Taren out into the gardens. He didn't say much in the way of explanation, and what he did say was muttered and fast. "There's someone I want you to meet" was the gist of it, the rest was apologetic and evasive. "I promise I'll explain later I just," head shaking, hand wringing nervousness, "you should meet her first." 

Taren followed him, curiously straining to look ahead into the gardens, searching for this big reveal.

There were several people about, tending to the medicinal plants or relaxing in their leisure time. He spotted Cassandra, keeping close to a small dark-haired child, an uncertain smile on her face. The child giggled and poked at Cassandra's armour, and the Seeker looked mostly amused, if a little stiff.

"Kiara!" Theo called out next to him, taking a wide stance with arms outstretched. The little girl and the Seeker both looked up with relieved smiles, and then the little girl was rushing toward them, springing into Theo's arms.

"Papa!" Theo took her up in his arms. She was a tiny thing, and she didn't share his winter pale complexion and startling silver hair, but she had his face; in the nose and eyes, even the smile.

"Taren," Theo turned to him, securing the toddler into a comfortable spot on his hip, "meet my daughter, Kiara." The little girl smiled at him, and it was definitely Theo's smile now, though more dimpled and sweet - like his had been, long ago. "Kiara, this is your uncle Taren."

"Hi, Kiara." Taren smiled, offering the girl a friendly wave. This was the last surprise he would have guessed at, but it was a great one. She looked up at him with wide eyes.

"Hi!" Kiara wriggled her little face toward her father's, her smile expectant. "Can we play now?"

"Papa really has to talk to uncle Taren for a minute..." Theo began to answer apologetically, setting the little girl down again on the ground. Her disappointment was evident, and Taren was standing back, grinning at the entire interaction. He bent down.

"I think it can wait, right?" He confided in the girl, who nodded, "we can play for a bit first."

Kiara grinned, and in an instant was running back into the garden's grassy clearing, demanding that they chase her.

She was surprisingly talkative, for one so young with someone so new. She insisted on piggy back rides and on being spun in the air by both of them, chattered happily about her Papa, the castle, herself, and asked quick, excited questions about everything and everyone else. And Taren, delighted, obliged her requests and indulged seriously every single curiosity she had:

"Why is your face like that? Pappa has swirls on his face too but you have so many!" She reached out, touching the spiralling tattoos on his cheek with curious pointing fingers, tracing the lines with a look of wonder. 

"We get them when we become adults. You know I was there when your papa got his? He didn't like getting them, that's why he doesn't have as many as me." Taren was sitting in the grass next to her now, having won the game of “catch me” and then been directed to observe a pretty flower that sprang up outside of the sectioned off herb gardens. They were dandelions, but that didn’t mean they weren’t pretty. 

"I like them. They're pretty. Can I have some?" She bounced with her questions, playing with the grass as she spoke, touching his clothes or hair or whatever other little thing caught her attention. 

"Maybe, when you become an adult."

A thoughtful pause. "Do you like apples? The lady gave me an apple while we waited for papa."

"Sure, I love apples." Taren answered, plucking a few dandelions and weaving them into a chain. Kiara watched, enthralled. 

"Do you like red apples or yellow apples?"

"Hmm.” Taren considered the question, come to think of it, he did have a preference. “Red apples."

"I like yellow ones!" Kiara volunteered happily. 

"Okay, I'll give you all my yellow apples and you give me your red ones, deal?"

"Okay!" Another thoughtful pause. "Do you know any songs? Sing one! There's a singer lady in the big building but papa says I can't go there..."

He taught her a repetitive song about ducks, and he was pretty sure he caught Theo glaring at him some minutes later while she laughed and danced about the gardens singing it on a loop.

Cassandra had slipped away when Theo had taken his daughter from her care, and she must have arranged for them to be left unbothered, because by sunset no one had come to them with any work requiring attention, and the little girl had found her way onto her father's lap, still sleepily singing about ducks. Theo gathered up the little bundle of sunkissed limbs and dark hair who was falling asleep on top of him, and brought her inside. Taren followed him up to his chambers, waiting outside for what was sure to be a very long conversation.

\---

"So I guess I have to stop calling you da'len." Taren said with a nudge at Theo's shoulder. They sat on the battlements just outside the door to Theo's room, while the sun dipping low behind the mountains cast the whole fortress in a soft violet glow.

Theo chuckled, and his smile was real. Peaceful. "I think you're her new favourite uncle. I'm never going to get that song out of my head, thanks to you."

"She's incredible. I can't believe you have a daughter. You!" He smiled, but there was silence for a moment, as soft rose coloured clouds drifted by overhead.

"You aren't mad, are you?" It was a silly thing for Theo to ask, but the nervousness in the question was serious enough.

"Why would I be mad?"

Theo shrugged. "Because I didn't tell you, didn't tell anyone..."

Taren frowned. "I'm not mad, Theo. But why didn't you?"

Another shrug, this one sadder. "We were going to. But after her mother... we weren't even bonded." He shook his head.

Taren sighed. The girl couldn’t have been more than four, which would have made his father only a teenager when she had been born, barely of age. As for not being bonded, well, perhaps there were some who might have cared, little as he liked to admit it, but it did hurt to think he might have been included in such fears.

"You think I'd care about that? Really? Me?" He nudged Theo again, prodding the smile back out of him.

"I just... didn't want us to be a burden." What an even sillier thing to say, but he supposed he understood it. Her birth would have coincided with the breaking of Kirkwall's Chantry; the beginning of the war between the mages and Templars. The chaos of the human world had been hard on the clans of the Free Marches. In those days they had been moving again, more frequently than ever; hunting was dangerous and food more scarce. Even Taren had taken to spending long stretches away from the clan, aiding their sister clans and gathering information when the fighting lessened the numbers of their scouts. Children born in those turbulent times did put a stress on the clan, but never anything but a welcome one. He wished he could have known then, had the chance to help.

"What happened to her? Kiara's mother?" The question had been in the back of his mind all afternoon. She was present in her daughter's skin and thick brown hair, in the colour of her eyes and the laugh that fell heavier than Theo's did, bold on such a little thing. But she was missing from Skyhold, and she was missing, as well, Taren realised now, from Theo's smile.

"She died." It wasn't a real explanation, but the weight of it was heavy. Theo looked away as Taren peered imploringly at him, telling his story to the sky. "We were travelling with some of her friends, they wanted to join the clan but... in the end, only Kiara and I made it."

"You didn't stay." It must have happened while he was away, out on some mission of his own. Why had no one told him that Theo had been back and gone again, with a child, no less? "Theo, you know we would have taken care of her, no matter what." She could have grown up with friends, family, a whole clan to look after her.

Theo shook his head. "I know." the admittance fell reluctantly, his nervousness giving way to something more apologetic. "The clan was moving again, and I had to go. I couldn't just leave her."

Taren nodded in solemn understanding. That, Theo did not have to explain. One orphan need not explain such things to another. “Tell me about what happened.” He suggested it softly, a request more than a demand. He wanted to know the full story, just as he always did, but he sensed too that it was about time that Theo told it, for his own sake. 

Theo began by describing her, the short-lived and sunny love he’d found unexpectedly in his travels. He talked about how they had fallen together, become inseparable, made plans for a future she never got to see. He described some of her friends, too, the ones who had been their companions and which might have been a family, if things hadn’t turned against them so unfairly. Their deaths he got out with little detail, a quick summary of events that were violent and painful, his face twisting into a tortured grimace as he skimmed past that bit of the tale. It was a long story, full of sorrows and unfair circumstances. Some of the recollection was edged in anger, and even the threat of tears. But through it all, he returned always to Kiara, to seeing her grow and teaching her about the world as best as he could - how to be safe in it, but also how to appreciate its beauty; the names of plants and animals, badly remembered Dalish tales before she slept at night. 

“And now we’re here, and it’s safe...and, it’s time I let us stay in one place for a while, I think.” He looked at Taren, straight in the eye and full of determination. “She’s not going back to the clan, understand? She stays with me.” As though he would have it any other way. 

“I wouldn’t ask it even if I thought I had that power.” Taren replied, reassuring. 

Theo breathed out, calmer, now that he was empty of his secrets. “You’re supposed to be the next Keeper. Isn’t it your job to send us home?” 

“Da’len, you are home.” 


End file.
